Itinerant Kingdom

by Istaran

Chapter 6: Not a home

It felt quite painful, like I was a sheet of rubber being stretched out well beyond my safe limit. Deus' emergency trick had shed a lot of my mass, making it a stretch to shift myself into the form of an adult, but Midnight's step father had been truly massive, a Clydesdale among ponies. My magic was enough to take his place, but not easily by any stretch.

What I planned to do was.. certainly stretching the terms of the Text's challenge. But it was the only thing I could think of to try to 'fix' things, and I was going to try. Midnight Oil walked by my side, drawing curious, but poorly hidden glances from townsfolk as she failed to hide the love in her eyes. She had always been afraid of her stepfather, and the change was too jarring to go unnoticed.

Meanwhile, Wind Chaser was going back to the foal school, playing 'Blank Slate' to keep up appearances. No one would question the absence of an itinerant maid with no prescheduled work, but a foal missing class ought to be noteworthy. It still angered me that Midnight's absence was considered unworthy of mention.

I stepped into the clinic, and spotted the doctor and the nurse waiting idly. 'My' wife was stable for the moment, and thankfully lucid, and there were no other patients at the moment. "You should take your break outside," I suggested, with just enough of a threatening tone to avoid any questions. There was.. some dark sense of enjoyment to be had playing an established thug, but I wouldn't want to make it a habit. Soon we were alone, though.

Fog Dancer looked up at me fearfully, but forced herself to meet my eyes. As I looked down at her, my façade faltered. There was sadness there. Guilt. I hadn't done this to her, but I felt as though I should have somehow, magically, stopped it from happening. Maybe I even was the catalyst that had triggered it: was Midnight's late night absence the proximate cause? He was definitely the ultimate cause, no getting around that, and at least he was getting what he deserved. The hint of kindness in my eyes just confused Fog Dancer, as she was uncertain what she was looking at.

"I swear," I began, "by the blood of the itinerant king that from this day forward no harm shall ever befall you by my hooves, regardless of what you answer." The voice was his, but the tone was well outside his usual range. Noble, bordering on regal, I would say. "Regardless of what has come before, and regardless of what may come, will you, Fog Dancer, swear your loyalty to me? Will you swear to obey my every command, and to remain loyal in all things for the rest of your life?"

She met my eyes quietly, thinking long and hard. Her mind was jumping through all kinds of impossible contortions, I was sure. Her loyalty to the stallion she thought stood before her was long since proven, in blood and broken bone, forged in fear and nearly forgotten affections. But the eyes she looked into now were not the eyes of her husband. He had changed, somehow, from the monster she had shared a bed with to.. what? The unknown was always frightening, but could it be worse than the nightmare she had been living? She locked eyes with her daughter, seeing her smile with simple happiness for the first time in years, and give an encouraging nod.

With her ascent, I pricked my hoof, squeezing out a tiny drop of blood and had her lick it, then did the same for Midnight. Then, I settled down to rest. "Now, we wait. Tomorrow you will see what has changed."

The fever overtook them both. I hassled the clinicians, keeping them from intervening too heavily, especially with their magic, and kept it down to some token efforts involving damp cloths and simple herbs. By morning Midnight was in perfect health, and Fog Dancer was feeling much better. We kept the privacy screen up, as they went through the early challenges of coming to terms with the nanospider subnets now living in their blood, and in their minds. Midnight was ecstatic. She had never dreamed something like this was possible, but she knew now that she had a place in the Itinerant Kingdom, a family where she was freely accepted, where she belonged, and where she had no fear. Fog Dancer was more.. confused. She had been blindsided by the whole thing, and was still trying to come to grips with who I was and what I had done with her former husband. She struggled, trying to free herself from the loyalty she felt to the man that had beaten her half to death more than once, crippled her wings, and left her in such a horrid state.

I tried to take Fog Dancer home that morning, but the doctor put his hoof down, reaching the limit of how far he could be pushed. By the evening, however, he relented, seeing how far she had improved. I didn't want him to see the full extent of her recovery unfold before his eyes.

"Oak Breaker," she said as I set her down in her own bed, eyeing the chains with anger. "Not Oak Breaker," she corrected. "Thank you so much for.. " she couldn't bring herself to name anything I had done. "Thank you. Am I.. Am I your wife now?" she asked.

"Do you want to be?" I asked.

"I.. I don't know."

"Then you are not. I'll not have an uncertain wife. But while I wear this form, you may be called to act the part."

She nodded in understanding. "Then.. what am I to you?"

"You are one of my beloved subjects, and I, the Itinerant King, am sworn to protect you, with all of my heart, all of my mind, and all of my power."

"And.. you are going to do that by.. pretending to be Oak Breaker? It.. it won't last. They'll see through you. They'll sense weakness, and try to take what you have."

"They won't take what matters.. the three of you.. the four of us," I shifted back to my 'Blank Slate' form, "I'll have Wind Chaser do the acting. She'll sell off what can be sold, and we'll leave with what we can carry. This place.." I rattled one of the chains with a hoof. "Is no place to call home."

"This isn't what I wanted," she said, running a hoof over one of the chains. "But.. this," she nodded to me, "isn't what I wanted either. You should have asked first. Honestly, not hiding behind masks."

I hung my head in shame, taking a moment to feel the weight of my decision, before shaking it off. "I did what I had to do.. what I could do for your daughter. If you were uninjured, I would not have pressed you as I did, might not have even invited you along. But.. I know now that you were.. are as broken as she is. I only hope that you will forgive me when I have put you back together the best I can."

"I forgive you. I do. But you should have asked permission, instead of forgiveness. And.. thank you for not.. taking my daughter away from me."

---

The next day, I was back in school with Midnight Oil. I convinced Ginger Dimples to trade places with Midnight Oil so I could sit in the center seat and be next to her, without displacing the bespectacled pegasus as we had on my first day. I did my best to pay attention, while Midnight tried to burn holes in my cheeks with the intensity of her loving stares. I rewarded her with occasional fleeting smiles, but otherwise pretended to ignore her, at least outwardly. Now that she was one of us, her subnet, 'Fossil', allowed us to talk mind to mind, as Wind Chaser and I did. We talked constantly throughout the school day, even so far as to discuss matters relevant to our education.

Lemon Drop was simply amazed at the improvement in Midnight's math skills, which she blushed off and blamed on my tutoring. And by the end of the day I even managed to lift a quill with my horn's magic, thanks to extensive guidance from my new unicorn subject.

When the schoolday ended, Wind Chaser arrived in her Clean Sweep persona along with a heavily bandaged Fog Dancer to inform miss Lemon Drop of our impending exit from the school. They gave some line about Oak Breaker finding a new opportunity in Canterlot, and bringing his family with him, and Clean Sweep being hired to help with the move, and thereafter the household while Fog Dancer finished healing.

Lemon Drop took it upon herself to load each of us foals down with several fairly advanced books, a month's worth of homework assignments and directions to mail them back to her when we finished, along with admonishments to continue tutoring one another.

In just a few short days, we were on the road, with two new members, a hefty bag of bits, and another chance for a fresh start.

"Canterlot, huh?" I asked Wind Chaser.

"It's a big place that makes it easy to be fairly anonymous. Unlike a small town, no one really notices a new pony moving in, or for that matter leaving," she was bearing Oak Breaker's form as we left town, as he was too well known to disappear without making an exit. "And we don't have to stay there forever. But it can serve our needs for now."

---

Itinerant Kingdom: current roster

Daniel Holden, AKA the Itinerant King
Race: Human (man)
Nanospider Subnet: Deus Machina
Powers/skills: Changeling shapeshifting, limited use of unicorn horn magic
Daniel's greatest asset is his role as 'king', and the loyalty of his handful of subjects. He is learning and growing quickly, though.
Fears: Dreaming, turning evil, and failing to save someone he cares about.

Wind Chaser
Race: Changeling (drone)
Nanospider Subnet: Turbine. NOTE: Turbine's permissions have been altered, and it is not reflexively obedient to Daniel, lending Wind Chaser a stronger protection for her autonomy.
Powers/skills: Highly experienced infiltrator, skilled in hand to hand combat, and high speed aerial maneuvers. She is well familiar with changeling shapeshifting, and has modest skill emulating a pegasus, unicorn, or earth pony's magic.
Wind Chaser's loyalty to her king is absolute, even to the degree of countermanding his orders or giving her own if she feels it necessary to protect him and his interests.
Fears: Being left alone.

Midnight Oil
Race: Unicorn (filly)
Nanospider Subnet: Fossil
Powers/skills: Talented at the use of telekinesis with high dexterity, and untiring in pursuit of her goals. She is still a 'blank flank', as she has not yet identified her special talent.
Overjoyed at being rescued, she is obsessed with her new king. However, her past has distorted her thinking with regards to sex and physical intimacy, making her overeager to please, and him hesitant to let her.
Fears: nothing.. anymore. All her fears are memories.

Fog Dancer
Race: Pegasus (mare)
Nanospider Subnet: Nimbus
Powers/skills: Her special talent is in low-altitude weather manipulation, something she has managed to remain involved in despite her crippling wing injuries a few years back. She brings in the fog in the middle of the night to accumulate dew and water plants, and then shoos it away during the morning.
Her oath of fealty was made under unclear circumstances, and her loyalty is minimal. Her strongest reason for joining the Itinerant Kingdom is to be with her daughter.
Fears: the unknown, especially with regard to her daughter's welfare.

Comments

[Amethyst Blade]

[Amethyst Blade]

5877645 Just saying that not many authors write changeling in such a way...doing things in the shadow for out protagonist...

[Istaran]

5877664 I get what you are saying, just curious as to why the phenomenon exists. I could see there being in story justification in some cases, though my biased assumption is a lot of cases are bad writing, overly focusing on the protagonist to the point of not allowing the supporting characters to be themselves.
Blind assumption, though, since I haven’t read the stories in question.